Nebre tore an arrow from his quiver, but was too confused to seat it. “Is he the man we saw before, or isn’t he? Can there be two of them, do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Bak admitted, equally at a loss.
The man stood where he was, watching them, as if waiting for them to draw near. What is the range of his weapon? Bak wondered. Is he carrying an ordinary bow? Or a composite bow such as those carried by Nebre and me? Far superior weapons to the older type, and with a range markedly longer.
Weapons not easy to lay hands on in a barren wilderness.
To leave the path and risk a broken ankle would have been foolhardy, and neither Bak nor Nebre was in any mood to turn around and run. Assuming the man’s bow to be ordinary, praying it was, they quickened their pace and forged ahead.
Scraps of white caught Bak’s eye. Several men striding into the wadi from an intersecting watercourse fifty or so paces beyond the hill on which the man stood. Kaha, Min mose, and Amonmose. Spotting Bak and Nebre, the portly trader placed his hands in front of his mouth to form a horn and shouted. Bak could not make out the words, but assumed a greeting. He raised a hand and waved.
“They must’ve thought us lost,” Nebre said, breaking into a smile.
Bak pointed toward the man on the hillside. “Shall we snare him?”
“Yes, sir!”
As they ran forward, the man hurried across the slope, moving to a spot from which he could see the Medjays and the trader. He stopped beside an upended slab of rock and peered around it. He must have realized he would be caught between Bak and Nebre and the other men, for he swung around, wove an upward path through the broken rocks clut tering the slope, and vanished over the hill’s crest.
“I couldn’t be certain,” Bak said. “He was too far away.
But he might well have been a man of Kemet.”
“Nomads sometimes move to Kemet, seeking a better way of life, and adopt the clothing and ways of our people.”
Amonmose, fully recovered from his experience in the flood waters, strode beside Bak with the vigor of a youth. “Perhaps the man you saw has come home to visit his kin.”
The evening had cooled, and a steady breeze blew along the eastern slope of the desert heights. In the clear air, the moon and stars glowed bright and clean, illuminating the hoofprints and droppings left by the donkeys in the caravan.
Their small party had followed the tracks down the main wadi and were crossing a low divide of gravel banks covered with sand, making their way to the next watercourse and the well.
“After following one man and losing him, you can imag ine how surprised we were to see another. If he was a differ ent man.”
“Are you sure the one who led you into the mountains is the same man who sent the boulder crashing down?”
“I’d wager my best kilt that he is. I know for a fact that he entered the gorge the night Dedu was slain.”
Thinking back over the chase through the foothills, Bak felt exceedingly frustrated. He had told Commandant Thuty that he knew nothing of the Eastern Desert and had thus far proven it over and over again. Their quarry had led him and
Nebre through the rugged landscape as if he held them on a leash, then had evaded them with the ease of a lizard in a thicket of thorny brush.
“I must admit I prayed you’d snare him,” Amonmose said.
“I’d not like to lead him to my fishing camp. If he’s treading the sands of this desert, slaying men for the fun of it, he might think my men fair game.”
Bak thought of the men who had been slain or had gone missing and might well be dead. Five men, at least four of them involved with exploring this vile land in search of riches. He doubted the fishermen were in danger, but still…
“Would it not be wise to send them across the Eastern Sea to the port that serves the turquoise and copper mines? They could sail out daily and would have a ready market for their catch. I think it safe to assume they’d be in no danger there.”
“Hmmm.” Amonmose’s brow wrinkled in thought. “The fishing is better around the islands on this side of the sea, but the men’s lives are worth more than a small profit.” He stubbed a toe on a rock, muttered an oath. “I suppose I’d have to cross the sea, too. They’ll need passes and other doc uments. Would you object if Nebenkemet and I travel on with you?”
Pleased that he would not have to cajole the merchant into accompanying him, Bak smiled. “You must vow that we’ll have no more swims in a flooded wadi.”
The trader laughed. “Not so much as a bath, Lieutenant.”
His good humor fading, Bak asked, “Now that User no longer has a guide, do you think he’ll alter his plan to remain in the Eastern Desert?”
“Ani’s been talking of turquoise since leaving Kaine. If he has his way, he’ll convince User to go on. If he can’t, I’m cer tain he’ll wish to tag along with us. Would User not be fool hardy to remain here, with no one to travel with but Wensu?”
Bak made a silent promise to himself to have a word with the explorer. Whether or not someone in his party had slain the man found dead north of Kaine, he wanted them all to stay together and to accompany him across the sea, if for no other reason than to keep them alive and well.
Chapter 12
Bak awoke to the stirring of donkeys. Long ribbons of red colored the sky to the east, heralding the rising sun. A stiff northerly breeze blew across the eastern reaches of the gran ite peaks, swirling fine dust across the wadi floor. Shivering, he rose from his sleeping mat and stretched muscles that ached more after his night of rest than they had the day be fore, immediately after his strenuous swim in the flood.
He and his companions had found the caravan camped in a wadi lying between high gravel banks. Several acacia trees stood at the edge of the latest channel cut into the ancient riverbed. The men were sleeping and he did not disturb them.
Psuro had told him User had decided to remain until evening, opting to travel on to the sea in the cool of a single night.
Bak looked toward the trees where, before falling asleep, he had seen Rona relieving Minmose. The Medjay was no longer there, nor could he be seen anywhere else. Thinking he had either grown thirsty or was more conscientious than most men assigned to guard duty, Bak walked up the wadi.
There the pools were located, so Psuro had said.
He followed the channel to a massive tumble of fallen boulders that rose to the top of a sheer wall of granite. Be yond the cliff, the reddish slopes of the mountain glittered in the early morning light. The dry watercourse took him around an angle formed by gigantic rounded boulders to the spring-fed pools. The songs of birds greeted the dawn and a large greenish lizard clung to the side of a boulder, awaiting a careless insect. Their indifference told him Rona was not here.
Several pools were located near the foot of a dry waterfall, reminding him of the place where the men had slain the grouse. The similarity ended there. Where the earlier gorge had preceded the pools, here the water was found inside the gorge, and its rocky floor discouraged the growth of the lush vegetation found at the other site. According to Psuro, the men had grown excited when they saw the pools, hoping for another feast. They had been sorely disappointed when User told them no grouse drank here; the birds preferred more open water.
Bak strode toward the pools. Three squawking ravens launched themselves into the air from behind a mound of rocks. Curious, he walked closer. A dark, bare foot caught his eye. Muttering a curse and a hasty prayer to the lord Amon that he would not find what he feared, he hurried forward.
Rona lay on his side behind the rocks, his form inert, lifeless.
Blood had drained from a slit in his back, and flies had gath ered in vast numbers on the dry, caked blood around the wound. Bak felt as if he had been struck hard in the stomach.